At some point, the hockey world (Hockey World?) will stop talking about Bobby Ryan, and how he didn't make the U.S. Olympic team, and how he should've made the U.S. Olympic team, and the process that led to him not making the U.S. Olympic team. At some point, that will happen.

Maybe that day will be Jan. 7, when Team Canada releases its Olympic roster. Maybe it'll come later. It's not today, though. Here are some scattered thoughts on the situation a couple of days after we watched it unfold.

Bobby Ryan played for Team USA in 2010. He won't be playing in Sochi. (AP Photo)

— We're learning the rationale. On Jan. 1 at Michigan Stadium, Team USA general manager David Poile said that he "mandated" the team keep five centers: Ryan Kesler, Joe Pavelski, David Backes, Derek Stepan and Paul Stastny. On Friday, he reiterated it.

That's relevant; if Poile and Co. opted to only go with four centers, and left Stepan or Stastny off the roster, there'd have been another available forward spot. Maybe that'd have gone to Ryan, maybe not — but it's tough to imagine having a better healthy scratch (and backup plan for the top six) than a four-time 30-goal scorer.

Ryan would've been a backup plan because Patrick Kane, Phil Kessel, James van Riemsdyk and Zach Parise are, at the moment, locks for the top six. But stuff happens in a short tournament. Sidney Crosby, for example, skated with about a half-dozen wingers at the Vancouver Games. Adjustments need to be made. Take van Riemsdyk; he's a great player in his own right, and his chemistry with Kessel was part of the reason he made the team, but imagine his skating, goal-scoring and physicality on a third line. That'd be pretty cool, and it would also open a top-six spot for Ryan, whose skating and defensive ability are slagged enough to be underrated but probably wouldn't be ideal on a third line.

— USA Hockey is in damage-control mode. Poile attempted on Friday to explain Brian Burke's blunt, harsh, published assessment of Ryan, who has scored more goals than any other NHL player over the last six years, save 10. "He can't spell intense," was Burke's headliner from Scott Burnside's all-access piece about the selection process.

So, here was Poile, trying to un-ring the bell. He stopped short of saying "Bobby Ryan is actually a terrific speller," but just barely.

“I am trying to apologize if I can to Bobby Ryan,” Poile said, adding that he called Ottawa Senators GM Bryan Murray and that Burke has tried to call Ryan. “If that was said about me or one of my players, or I was Bryan Murray or Bobby or his agent, I would be very upset with this. I've apologized as much as I can.”

“In a management setting, we're dealing on a daily basis of talking about our players sometimes positively, sometimes critically. What goes on the room should stay in the room. Unfortunately, this was a characterization on the whole was not representative of what actually happened.”

— Media grabs come with a price. Poile's stance on the publication of Burke's remarks was eye-opening.

“The problem we had was the communication breakdown that happened, we thought this was more of (an 'HBO 24/7') situation where we had editorial review,” Poile said of the pieces done by ESPN's Burnside and USA Today's Kevin Allen. “It caught all of us off-guard. That's on us."

Letting the people you're writing about approve your stories is typically a no-go. Given the extreme amount of access, it's understandable that USA Hockey would want it; it's also never, ever implied.

Poile also said that USA Hockey decided to not inform players of the roster decisions before Jan. 1 to maximize the impact of the post-Winter Classic announcement on NBC. That is to say, they did it for TV. Players knew this to be the case, and everyone who was cut got a phone call after the announcement, but part of the reason for the commotion surrounding Burke-Ryan was that the player learned simultaneously that A) he didn't make the team and B) the guy who drafted him regretted not taking Jack Johnson instead.

That sort of stuff is a balancing act; publicity is great, and the Burnside/Allen pieces were outstanding. They also weren't P.R. releases. It goes with the territory. Same with the roster announcement: If you make one choice, you choose against something else. TV won out over telling players firsthand, and in at least one instance, there was blowback.

— None of that matters much. Part of Poile's set of apologies Friday came with the revelation that Burke was "absolutely (Ryan's) biggest supporter on our staff."

Maybe that's true — the assessment process for these sorts of things has to be brutally honest, and the fact that Burke slagged Ryan's theoretical lack of intensity doesn't preclude him from believing in his attributes. Maybe Brian Burke was playing devil's advocate, and that's the part of the process that made the biggest waves. Maybe he's Bobby Ryan's biggest fan.

If it is true, it's a problem. One line from Burnside's piece in particular seems to attest to that:

Poile asks for a show of hands: "Are guys nervous about Bobby Ryan?" A flurry of hands go up in the air.

"That's a lot of guys," Poile notes.

How many penalty-killing forwards does a team need? Why was Ryan's lack of power-play production such an issue, given the fact that he was stuck behind Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Teemu Selanne for half a decade? Why is more emphasis not placed on scoring goals, since it wins hockey games? Can you really afford to leave the second-best American goal-scorer of the last six seasons home for the Olympics?

Only USA Hockey truly knows its answers to the first three questions, and those answers, whatever they are, are certainly debatable. As for that last one — we're all going to find out in February.